The Worst Fear Is Fear Itself

It has been headline news in recent weeks that gloomy outlook of economy is spreading everywhere. People worry that their investments will keep nosediving into the bottomless swirl and eventually dry up. What if we suddenly become unemployed because of the economic slump, will we have enough savings to pay the rent, mortgage, grocery and everyday essentials? What about family vacation, college education for our kids and retirement plans? Will they become unreachable goals due to the global economic slump?

Yes, fear has no physical presence, yet its psychological impact upon people is tremendous, not to mention the fact that it is contagious in a deadly way. If we keep on talking about how bad it will become, it can only become worse rather than better. Even though the statistics speaks itself very loudly that we are in recession, fear can only create frantic reactions from investors, which can only worsen the economic numbers and it does no good as far as improving the economy is concerned. For example, some critic says that GM stock will diminish to almost nothing. Doesn’t this create a scenario of shareholders dumping their GM stocks? And you can imagine that the result of it is catastrophic, because 2.9 million people’s jobs are in danger. By the way, I do not hold any stocks, so my judgement is impartial. The economic situation applies to real estate as well. If we keep saying that the real estate prices will dip xx percent next year, doesn’t it hold people off from buying houses? And when the housing industry (8.5% overall GDP) tumbles, along with auto industry (12% of manufacturing GDP), do you think we still have a chance as a nation? I am not saying that we shouldn’t worry about all these things. What I am saying is that excessive fear about these things will do the economy no good at all. In order to overcome the fear, a constructive rescue plan has to be implanted. In my opinion, keeping the jobs abundance is the foremost priority. On one hand the government has to come up with a plan to save big industries ( not to sacrifice tax payers’ money as an exchange, but ask the industries to slowly pay back), and on the other hand the government has to keep creating jobs, either through building infrastructure or so-called green jobs. I think only through these measures, we can finally see a ray of hope to conquer fear. Yes, we can, as Mr. Obama said in his acceptance speech.

A New Dimension of Democracy

Today is Nov 4, the day of U.S. presidential election being held across America, I feel obliged to write something before the first black president becoming a reality tonight. This will be unprecedented, and it proves to the world that the United States of America has reached a new profound level of democracy, where racial and ethnic differences being put behind anything else and only the qualities of a person being considered. This is a big change. It may not seem too big a deal to the Digital- Generation, however, it is truly unbelievable for the older generation, or even the Boomer Generation.

I always believe that only the people who have been through destitute themselves can truly understand what it means to build a strong and fair community where everyone can start with equal-footing. In a truly Utopia state, there are no such people who are classified as underprivileged- everyone is treated equally and given the best education as far as a person’s ability can absorb, of course, putting behind financial and a whole bunch of other factors.

I understand that the United States of America is still a capitalist country. But when capitalism gone too far, all we see is “greed-ism,” where investors or capitalists are looking for easy money. Investors used to enjoy moving their money from one place to another for a few hours and resulted in huge amounts of profit on the paper. When the system was built to attract investors with easy money on their minds, it will backfire- the recent financial storm and credit crisis are good examples. Who is at fault ? The system or the greedy people?  Well, I don’t like to point finger at the people and accuse them for wrong doing. Instead, I believe that people can be educated and our system can be innovated to the extent of peacefulness and fairness. I agree with Mr. Obama who believes in hard working and earning own share of capitals in a fair and reasonable way. Only success that comes from hard working will stay with us much longer and more enjoyable as well. The great entrepreneur of Taiwan, who recently passed away at the age of 92, said that he believed the prosperity of a nation is dependent upon hard work of manufacturing not the manipulation of financial market by a small group of people. The only way to avoid and prevent the financial storm from happening again is for us to go back to the basic- to find the good old passion of hard work. By the way, it is important to build a system where hard work prevails and the greed fails. I am very sure the Harvard-bred Mr. Obama knows exactly what to do starting Nov 5, 2008.

Karma, the forever energy

I have been riding bike a lot recently. I really enjoy the thrill of the breeze lashing my face and body, not to mention that I am doing a great favor for the environment and my shallow pocket. When it becomes a routine exercise, it is actually giving me a double favor-good health and saving money. Anyway, I love riding my, actually David’s, $100 mountain bike. I have been thinking of getting a used one myself from the flea market, but thinking of our crammed garage, my buying impulse usually abates.

Everybody was shocked by recent gruesome decapitation of a greyhound bus passenger by a mad Chinese man. It was a rare case in Canadian history, you know, a innocent passenger got stabbed and decapitated while sleeping on the greyhound bus on his way back to Manitoba. How could such an incident happened between two strangers without any provocation of any sort? According to Buddhist’s explanation, it is the past karma between two of them that resulted in such a brutal kill. We never know what we had done terribly wrong in the past lives, but whatever we had done in the past will stay with us forever- in a way it’s like energy- once being created, never will vanish. With this in mind, we shall never create bad energy, or at least try our best to avoid the chance to create bad energy. If we think we had created bad energy or bad deeds in the past, we should constantly repent ourselves to diminish the effect of bad karma to occur.

Anyway, this is my humble thought to the greyhound bus incident. I greatly feel sorry for the innocent young man who had died. This incident, however, has taught us to do good deeds thus create good karma, if you believe the cycle of “cause and effect” in the Buddhist doctrine. May peace be with the victim’s family.

Bike Lanes

It’s sad to learn that a cyclist, actually he was a vice-principal of a elementary school, got killed while pedalling to work in Richmond B.C. While the government of British Columbia advocates green environment to save the Earth, yet we do not provide enough safe bike lanes for our environmentally conscious cyclists in the province. When the gasoline prices keep going up on a daily basis and when the people start to change their transportation habit to cope with the high energy cost, isn’t it time for our government to provide safe roads for those who put up efforts to save the Earth?

I know it is still far from realization, but it is good to visualize our city to designate special bike lanes for its citizens to travel, I mean the real bike lanes where only cyclists are allowed so that they don’t have to fight with cars, trucks and other gasoline-consuming vehicles on the streets. I think metro Vancouver area is a good place to do that because it is small enough for most people to transport from one place to another by bikes, unlike most places in the states where it takes too long to travel from one place to another. U.K. has already begun to plan for the bike lanes, I think it’s about time for us  to begin following suit.

Economic woe?

I lost my second biggest client after more than ten years of supplying merchandise to him. I understand that it is getting harder and harder to conduct small business anywhere, because of the growing trend and consumer tendency towards bigger establishments. As a result, small businesses have been struggling to survive, especially during the chaos of world economy when everyone is predicting an  imminent recession. While writing this blog entry, the US Reserve and Bank of Canada just lowered the prime rate by .75% to 3.5%, hoping to save the stocks market from going bearish. I don’t know how good this stimulating dose will last; we just have to wait and see.

The Asian markets are not any better during the economic chaos. I read from the news, which says that the average stocks investor loses NT$200,000 (about $7000 Cdn) on the paper if the stocks have not been sold. Well, economy nowadays is interconnected-without national boundaries-no one is going to survive without others doing well. It’s kinda like common karma for everyone living in the world. We can only hope that it will get better eventually, and meanwhile we just continue to do our best any way we can, hoping to sustain the harmony for our families, and, the society where we live.

Being a teacher for a day

A friend of mine is probably going back to Taiwan to have his career changed. He is a talented guy with a prestigious PhD degree in Chemical Engineering. After having lived and worked in North America for a long time, he felt burned-out and needed a new space to fulfill his goal of life. And that space is somewhere in Asia where he feels he has a better chance of succeeding whatever he is pursuing in life. I really wish him well in his soon-to-be new career. And I kinda wondering when my time of relocating to Asia will be. Well, I have no clue right now…. I guess the time is when I know what I will be doing and ready to go. By the way, I will be reconnoitering first. I dreamed that I was a teacher, English teacher to be exact, who had a special way of teaching. It was just a silly dream, not that I am interested in a teaching position.

Bo walks to the classroom fifteen minutes early to ponder upon what he’s going to teach today.
He is kinda disappointed with the statistics, showing that Taiwanese students are among the worst in terms of English proficiency in the world. He hates the shown numbers to the bones, because he stoutly defies the idiocy of Taiwanese students. To him, and being a Taiwanese himself, Taiwan is one of the countries in the world that nurtures the high-caliber students in all fields. How could they be so lacking in the English language? It has got to be the way they were taught to learn the subject, and Bo has decided to revolutionize the stereo-type learning process. Bo always prepares ahead of time, because he believes that luck always goes with people who are prepared and having confidence. Bo looks at his students with keen and piercing eyes, because he sees the high quality in every one of them through the eye sockets that are connected to their brains. He believes that there are only poor teachers, and there is no such thing as poor students. If the students suck, then their teacher must suck further. With that in mind, Bo walks to the podium smilingly.

” Good morning fellow students. I am your new English teacher. I am a bit on the side of shyness because I have never been a teacher before. Public speaking always falters me, but today I am at ease. Why? Because when I look at your guys from this podium, all I see is “A” students. For that I am grateful for the principal who assigned me the best class in the world,” Bo says sheepishly while students are gaping at his opening statement, trying to figure out what kind of teacher Bo is. Hey, not many teachers who can deprecate themselves while complimenting their students at the same time.

Bo continues,” Who doesn’t like Internet, please raise your hand?” There is no hands raised obviously, so Bo says, ” Since everyone likes to go on the net, I want every one of you to go on the net for two hours every single day. Oh, by the way, make sure you turn on your favorite songs and listen to them as well. I want everyone to set up a blog site and write your journals on-line in English, and then e-mail me when you are done. I will take a look at your sites and make necessary corrections or suggestions.” The students are both exciting and worried- they are happy because they have a legitimate reason to go on-line; meanwhile they are worried because they have to write journals using the language from Mars. Since Bo is the new English teacher, they think they should at least give him a chance to do his job. Though they doubt they can write very well in a foreign language, they docilely accept their new assignment-writing journals in English on-line for the new teacher to see.

Bo is exhausted after a day of teachiong at school, but he is happy to view the blog sites of his students. With the mission of upgrading English proficiency of his students, he gingerly reads every journal written by his students and corrects the obvious mistakes. He believes that the basic way to improve English is by reading profusely, and, by writing boldly even with lots of grammatical errors. Making errors is not a shameful thing; afraid of trying to write is. Yeah, Bo admits he is not a good talker, but at least he will try to be a good silent teacher by encouraging his students to read and write. While thinking of his students, Bo drifts to sleep in his study room.

 I was awake, because I had to take a leak. That was a funny dream to being a teacher. My grandmother was a teacher, so was my uncle at one time. Teaching is a prestigious job, and it takes one’s energy and effort to be a successful teacher. Well, it’s not bad to being a silent teacher for a day.

Happy personality is the soul of success

I received a forwarded message from a friend a while ago. I thought it was very inspiring to cheer up people in depressed moods, and I would like to share it with my blog readers.

Once upon a time there was a French president, who was famous for his witty responses to questions asked by reporters and the general public. One day a French housewife asked him,” Is it true that French women are more dazzling than women of other countries?” Without hesitation the president replied,” Of course, women in their twenties are as pretty as roses in Paris; women in their thirties are beautiful like love songs; women in their forties are beyond perfect.” The housewife asked again,” How about those women who live beyond their forty something?” The president replied with grinning,” Oh, Mrs., Do you know the fact that no matter how old the woman is in Paris, she does not appear to be over forty?”

Once upon a time there was a Taiwanese diplomat, who lived in Washighton DC. One day he attended an international dance party, and he was invited by an American girl to dance. The girl asked him,” Do you like American girls or Chinese girls?” He replied with grinning,” I like those girls who like me.” This was a polite and respectful response which satisfied any person who might have asked the question, and not to create embarrassment for anybody.

A handsome young man who was having a vacation in a resort. After he checked into the hotel where he stayed, he entered a room by mistake, and there happened to be an elderly lady living in that room. The young man said with an apology,” I am sorry, I am sorry, I must be in the wrong room.” The lady said smilingly, ” That’s not necessarily true; you are only late by forty years.”

An unknown Western philosopher said,” Happy personality is the soul of success.” When we have a little humor, whether it is to tease ourselves, a witty response, or share with others, it will release depressed moods for others, and thereby fill their hearts with happiness.
William Shakespeare used to say,” If you add more sugar to the sweet stuff, you may not taste the sweetness. If you add happiness to joyful things, the extent of happiness will be magnified.”
Yes, we should possess with a joyful mind every single day to make plain vegetables become festivity and every corner of the walls filled with radiant sunshine.

Romance in the Vineyard

L is a fashion designer whose masterpiece was poached by her supervisor. As a result, she’s ousted by the company to join the unemployed troop. As a young girl, she has been dreaming to marry someone who is rich and affluent and to live happily thereafter. However, life is not always what she originally planned. She and her best friend M have gone through lots of bad time, and they often drink beer on the rooftop together to weave their unfulfilled dream as starry sky guards them through the night until dawn light gradually emerge from the eastern sky.

One day L’s distant relative calls and proposes her a deal-that’s is, if she could work in her granduncle’s vineyard, which worths billions of Korean dollars, for a year, he would bestow his vineyard to her. At first, L was resistant to this proposal despite a great fortune that comes with the deal. ” How could I, a city- grown girl, survive such a drudgery under the scorching sun in a remote farm where everything is so crude to the extreme?” she thought. L’s parents and sole brother are happier than ever after hearing the proposal by L’s granduncle, especially after they find out the value of the vineyard from a local real estate agent. For the sake and fate of the family, they incessantly persuade L to work in the farm for a year, and sell the vineyard after a year of physical torture. ” Hey, it’s only a year, then 2 billion dollars is yours to keep. We can buy a big house, a decent car, and live like a king… blah blah blah…….,” they keep on preaching L like a group of experienced financial planners who advise their client after a windfall from the lotto 6/49. Since L is unemployed, she decides to give the vineyard a try.

That’s how L met C, who is an orphan, adopted by her granduncle when he was a little boy, and C has been working in the vineyard ever since then. C has a dark-skin complexion and a pair of big eyes that illuminate even the darkest corner of the vineyard. He is not an illiterate farmer, as quite a few of them are, but an erudite scholar specializing in organic farming of grapes. The granduncle, the owner of the large vineyard, sets up a scheme for his niece to learn farming from C, his adopted son, hoping for them to inherit his vineyard, into which he has devoted his lifetime effort.

L, being a princess from pampering of her parents, is so clumsy when undertaking menial work, something that she dislikes tremendously. Waking up at 4 am every morning to conduct various tasks in order to ensure the best quality of grapes is intolerable for her, not to mention that she has to play with dirt and stinking fertilizer throughout the process. Though C is boisterous in treating L, underlying the surface is caring, admiration, and most amazingly, love. L, on the other hand, learns the merit of hard working of which she did not have a chance to experience in the city. She finally realizes that a dream can only be carried out through hard work and dedication; if not, dream is always a dream that is forever suspended in the air. She eventually understands the sublime quality of working in the farm, and subsequently discovers her true love, which has been nurtured in the vineyard ever since the first day she stumbled upon the farm.

My favorite quotes:(1) Farming is not about harvest and fertilizing, but about the possession of a mentality of a farmer when your crop is inflicted with a pest. A farmer’s mind is similar to that of a parent’s, forever caring for the beloved child.(2) I want to be a man of the great earth to imbibe you with nutrients, and to guard you through eternity.

Hey, let me tell you something. If you haven’t been a farmer, you haven’t experienced what life is all about.

A Child Within A Great Writer

Write for the heck of it. There is no way that one would get stuck by the writer’s block if one kept on writing as one’s whim takes one to the factory where there is never short of imagination and creativity. Did you know the greats of the writing world are so great, not because they have inherently literary senses, but because they never stop writing even when they don’t feel like it? That’s it. Keep on writing to hone your keen sense, and with that a great work eventually emerge. The worst scenario is to feel that life is short and willing oneself to be a sitting dud, totally oblivious to the importance of a start-up mentality,which is the main factor that drive the greats anew every single time, and thus keep them in the game of their profession.

The failed ones always argue that it is easier said than done, whereas the thriving ones always keep on weaving dreams and working fervidly at the same time; even though they understand that life is short and painful as most of us do, somehow they manage to put this thought at bay. The real passion toward writing has no time, place and distance restraints, and it is resistant to attrition. A person with passion about anything does not judge his/her achievement by either monetary measure or fame. In fact, passion is just the call of nature, a feeling to justify one’s existence in this very world; it needs no reward to preserve its potency, for it is an inner gratification only known to the beholder. When everything else fails in this world, one’s passion toward something one loves is what sustains one and keeps one going.

Even the most successful and renown writer has a mentality of an innocent child within himself/herself. More often than not we think of a famous writer is a very mature, thoughtful, and sophisticated person who has plenty of life experience to reflect upon his/her novel. However, we often ignore the fact that this famous writer has an imaginative mind like that of a child who is often excited in observing this colorful world. It is actually this kind of imaginative mind from the perspective of a child, combined with maturity of experience in life and impeccable manipulation of literary art, eventually brings out the greatness of a writer.

In the eyes of a child everything is beautiful and profound. Whether it is snow flakes falling from the grayish-white sky, hail pounding on the rooftop, leaves changing clothes in transition from autumn to winter, or merely two squirrels playing with an acorn-they all fascinate an innocent child to a profound extent. Observing the snow falling provokes a child’s curiosity to probe into the meteorological wonder, urging the child to find out why snow flakes come in different sizes and shapes, yet they are all the same in the end. A child may be hyper sometimes, but the change of nature sometimes calms down the child’s agitated mind, cultivating the child the virtue of patience in observing every movement from the sky above. Yes, this pristine state of mind is what we have lost during the transition from childhood to adulthood. Because we have seen so many things and gone through so many ups and downs, we are kinda impassive toward everything surrounding us. A child’s mind, however, is like that of a start-up company, eagerly want to build a new world. And, in my opinion, that’s what every writer needs to conquer himself/herself-to construct a pristine state of mind like that of a child and observe everything through the eyes of a child.

Bill, The Dreamer

Bill is a loyal lottery buyer. He buys his ticket twice a week at the same store,at the same time and with the same manner, which makes the store clerk remember him very well. ” I’d like to buy the 6/49 winning ticket, please,” Bill says it in an usual tone as if the 6/49 jackpot would pop up in front of him immediately. Though he has never won any prize higher than 10 bucks, he never gets discouraged. He often thinks that he is making a good cause for the society by contributing $2 twice a week to the lottery corporation. He has never thought of being rich or famous because he is an ultimate loner by choice, and the sudden windfall, if ever strikes him, would not improve his humble lifestyle but create chaos instead.

Bill is obsessed with coffee and cigarette, because these two things are his daily essentials. He is not sure he could survive without them. I guess Bill is self-employed who works for himself, as I said earlier he is a loner who has a hard time getting along with others. When he was young he chose to run away from his family, took refuge in an orphanage throughout most of his youth. He moves from time to time just for the sake of finding a place that is reasonable, neat and quiet,and hopefully away from prostitutes and drug addicts. He is poor but he has the dignity to live in a comfortable place for the rest of his life. Bill does not like to have a telephone in his room because the sudden ring of the phone might jerk awake his nerves and make him to the state of paranoia. Not until recently he bought an on-to-go cell phone, you know the one you buy from the store for $20 bucks and pay 40 cents per minute waiving the monthly fee, which he enjoys very much, not because of the phone but because it is not required for him to register anything on the paper, kind of protecting his identity. He does not like anything to do with his name on it, not because he has anything to hide but he just doesn’t like it, period.

Bill has a plan if he ever won the jackpot. He would give away all the money to where it should be, and he would personally implement his donations according to his notes regarding to charitable organizations that interest him. But the jackpot has never come. One out of 14 million chances is very slim if you really think about it. But you never know, as they advertised on the billboard. If the windfall gonna strike you, there is no way you can avoid it, unless you stop buying it. The thing is we always have strong confidence and belief that one day down the road we will be the chosen one, and that is exactly why people keep buying lottery and, of course, the lottery corporation keeps on making money from us. Human weakness. Well, it’s basically the same mentality in the gambling industry, same as the speculation on the stocks, though the winning odds are way higher in the later due to more capital investment needed to enter the game. Of course Bill does not buy stocks. If he did, he would get a heart attack because of the nature of fluctuation in the stocks. Besides, where would the initial capital come from? He barely has enough dole to get by his daily essentials. Two bucks twice a week does not hurt him too much on his paltry income, especially he thinks of it as making good causes for the general public. But he is determined to make bigger good-causes when the windfall finds a path to reach him. He is a patient man who has plenty of time to wait as the clock keeps on ticking. Bill is laughing out loud in solitude as if one day he’ll make his dream come true. By the way, he stashes his notes under his pillow so that he can read them before he retires from the day.